Monday, April 30, 2018

Guest Post: St. Aphilas the Great

What if Christianity was introduced in Aksum earlier? muses Tom Bornholdt

Mani had said that there were
four great powers: Rome, Persia, China and Aksum. Unhappy with being
excommunicated for his unusual theology (Jesus was neither fully divine
but the incarnation of a created Logos with a human soul), St. Lucian of
Antioch had decided to leave Antioch. In the year 285, he arrived at the
port of Adulis, which was part of the Kingdom of Aksum, and began to
preach. The next year, he moved to the capital city of Aksum, where he
proceeded to build a substantia1 congregation despite narrowly avoiding
being murdered on two occasions. In the year 301, he achieved his
greatest success when he converted St. Aphilas the Great, the King of
Aksum. Aphilas was zealous in his new faith and early next year
made it the official religion of Aksum.

Aphilas became distressed when he learned about the persecution of
Christians that the Roman Emperor Diocletian was conducting. In the
spring of 303, he decided to do something about it. He had increased the
size of his army because he planned to expand his nation's dominion,
starting with a campaign against the Himyarites that was already
underway. He would use his army to save the Egyptian Christians from
Roman persecution.

The first step in his campaign was to
invade the Kingdom of Kush, which was between Aksum and Egypt. Kush had
once been a minor power. It had fought the legions of the Roman
Republic on more than one occasion, but it had been in decline for nearly
two centuries. Aphilas found it easy to defeat the Kushite Army and
captured its capital of Meroë in September. The bulk of his army
remained there for six weeks to rest while bringing up supplies and
reinforcements. Aphilas was pleased to find that there is a sizable
Christian population in Kush. As he was getting ready to resume his
march north, he told them that he intended to rescue the Christians in
Egypt, which earned their support. There were pagan Kushites that were
unhappy with the Romans as well. A few years ago, Diocletian had invited
the Nobatae to invade the northern part of their country because he
thought the Nobatae would make a good buffer between Egypt and Kush.
Because of this, Aphilas feels comfortable leaving behind a relative
small garrison to occupy Meroë.

As they advanced north,
the Aksumite army encountered the Nobatae and defeated them in a series
of relatively minor engagements. The Nobatae eventually warned the
Romans. In January, a small Aksumite advance force reached the Egyptian
border, where it was quickly defeated by the I Maximiana Legion. This
easy victory made the Romans underestimate both the quantity and quality
of the Aksumite army. Three weeks later the Aksumite main force
overwhelmed and annihilated a small Roman army at Syene. Aphilas then
spends only nine days resting his army at Syene before continuing north.
He captures the prestigious city of Thebes after a relatively brief
siege. Meanwhile the Aksumite navy has captured the Roman port on the
Red Sea at Berenice.

The Egyptian Christians viewed
St. Aphilas as someone sent by God to rescue them in their hour of
tribulation. Up until this point, Egyptian Christianity was increasingly
accentuating monasticism but there was now a sudden turn towards
militarism as many Christians volunteered to fight for King Aphilas.
However, it wasn't only Christians who were pleased by this development.
For one thing, Diocletian had persecuted Manicheans as well as
Christians. A short distance downriver from Thebes was the small city
of Coptos, which had revolted against Roman rule in 292. This revolt
ended only after a lengthy siege of Coptos, which resulted in its almost
total destruction. Then in 297, Domitius Domitianus tried to exploit
Egyptian anger over Diocletian's recent tax edicts in an unsuccessful
attempt to usurp Diocletian. This discontent began to reemerge.

Aphilas
soon continued his march north, and in July he engaged another Roman
army. This one was stronger than the one he destroyed at the border but
it is still badly outnumbered. The Roman general was more cautious this
time. He was defeated but avoids annihilation. He retreated into the
fortified provincial capital of Ptolemais Hermiou. A siege began, which
lasts until the city is captured by the Aksumites on December 17.
While the siege was going on, the bulk of the Aksumite army was unable to
advance any further. However, the Aksumites scouts reported that there was
no significant Roman presence left in Upper Egypt. Aphilas sent small
parties of cavalry raiding as far north as the large city of
Oxyrhyncus. However, he gave officers leading these raids orders not to
harm Christians but rather to spread the word that the persecution was
over. They were to kill any Romans they found persecuting Christians.
These raids caused the revolt to spread. Meanwhile, the Aksumite navy
had continued to dominate the Red Sea and captured the important port of
Myos Hormos. This effectively cut Rome's trade with India.

While this was going on, Diocletian was campaigning against the Capri
near the Danube. While he was receiving reports of the Aksumite
incursion, he initially hoped it was only a large raid and regarded the
Capri as being the greater threat. In the late summer, his opinion
changed, and he began to see the Aksumite invasion as posing a grave
threat to the empire. However, the emperor's health had been
deteriorating badly, which interfered with his ability to make key
decisions. As a result, he put his Caesar Galerius in charge of the Egyptian campaign.

In December,
General Constantine, the son of the Caesar Constantius Chlorus arrived
in Egypt to take command. He brought substantial reinforcements with
him, and Galerius was pressuring him to defeat the Aksumites as quickly
as possible. For not the first time, Constantine had the feeling that
Galerius was hoping he would fail and die. By this time, the rebellion
has spread into parts of Lower Egypt with the rebels being
disproportionately Christian. Constantine had been becoming
increasingly sympathetic to Christianity and had opposed their
persecution. Before leaving for Egypt, he had recommended to Galerius
that stopping the persecution might makes things easier but this
recommendation was ignored. Constantine initially concentrated on
quelling the rebellion in Lower Egypt. As he did so, his attitude
towards Christians became less favorable as he started to see how they
could pose a threat to the Roman Empire. He is quite severe with the
rebels.

While it was besieging Ptolemais Hermiou, the
Aksumite army began to experience some problems with the Nobatae
attacking its supply caravans. Immediately after the capital fell ,
Aphilas decided to rush a piece of his army south to counter that. He
then let the bulk of his army rest there for nearly a month before
continuing upriver. It was only when he entered Lower Egypt and
approached Oxyrhyncus that he encountered Constantine, resulting in a
battle on February 24. Once again, the Aksumite army possessed a
numerical advantage, though not an overwhelming one. It proved to be a
lengthy battle of attrition which, was something that Constantine could
ill afford. However, late in the day, the best of his cavalry was finally
able to defeat the Aksumites, but they were able to make a reasonably
orderly retreat as night fell. Constantine was not very satisfied with
his victory. What his scouts reported next morning indicated that the
enemy was retreating but not broken. He reluctantly decided not to
pursue and instead turned his attention back to quelling the Christian
rebels in Lower Egypt.

Prior to this battle Aphilas was
beginning to feel that liberating all of Egypt was going to be
relatively easy. Afterwards he pulled back to Hermopolis to ponder his next move. While this was going on, Diocletian had been very
seriously considering resigning as emperor and going into retirement due
to his poor medical condition. Galerius had been strongly encouraging
him to do that. Diocletian was willing to let Galerius make most
decisions but unwilling to step down while Egypt remains in grave
danger. Because of this, Galerius was deeply upset when he learned that
Constantine did not pursue the Aksumites after his victory at Oxyrhyncus
and demanded that he immediately advance into Upper Egypt. Constantine
carried out these orders even though he had a significant fraction of
his army tied down at Memphis fighting rebels.

After
the capture of Syene, St. Aphilas began forming military units with
Egyptian Christians. After a while, the Aksumites assigned to train them
found that more than a third of these soldiers were fanatically brave
being all too willing to suffer martyrdom on the battlefield. They
were also intensely loyal to Aphilas. These Christians were separated
from the others and were given more intensive training and better
quality weapons and shields. The small fraction of these that were
cavalry had seen some action but the infantry had only been used for
garrison duty. When he returned to Hermopolis, Aphilas decided to move
the elite Christian Egyptian infantry to Antinopolis which was very near
Hermopolis but on the opposite bank of the Nile.

Constantine's
strategy was to split his forces with the one piece on west bank of the
Nile and the other on the east. Each piece was roughly equal in terms
of cavalry but the portion on the east bank was much stronger in
infantry. On May 2, Constantine made a diversionary attack on the west
bank trying to convince Aphilas that Hermapolis was his objective. He
was largely successful in this, so Aphilas' forces were concentrated on
the west bank. The following morning Constantine's forces on the east
bank started marching hard towards Antinopolis. They engaged the
Aksumite forces north of the city, and this time it was the Romans who
had the numerical advantage. However, the Roman infantry were fatigued
from their hard march and were therefore unable to quickly rout the
enemy as Constantine had hoped. They did have some success at least
grinding down the Axumites pushing them back towards the city.

Meanwhile,
King Aphalis was ferried across the Nile escorted by his personal
guard. Upon arriving at Antinopolis, he found the elite Christian
Egyptian infantry had not yet been committed but was being held in
reserve. His senior Aksumite officers were worried that their troops
were on the verge of breaking. They advised the king to quickly pull
them back inside the city.

Aphilas rejected that
advice. He addressed the Christian Egyptians. As he did, he showed them
a Roman spear. He claimed that the Archangel Michael had visited him
last night and gave him the spear, telling that it was what the Roman
soldiers had used to stab Jesus while He was on the Cross. St. Aphilas
told these soldiers that they would now become the spear that God would
use to stab the Romans back. He was naming them the Holy Spear of God.
He then ordered them to counterattack the Romans. This counterattack
came at the moment when Aksumite resistance was starting to weaken. By
this time, the day was getting hot, which was taking its toll on both the
Romans and the Axumites. The Holy Spear of God entered the battle
fresh and in their intense religious zeal seemed impervious to the heat.
They fought with a ferocity that stunned the Romans and lifted the
sagging morale of the Aksumites.

Meanwhile, some of
the Aksumites on the west bank were slowly crossing the Nile, using the
ample fleet of rafts and boats that Aphalis had at his disposal. The
tide of the battle shifted and before long it was the Romans legionaries
who broke. Unfortunately, most of the Roman infantry had the river
behind them. Many of them ended up drowning, including General
Constantine who had been at the forefront of the fighting. Lactantius
discerned some poetic irony in that fact because Emperor Hadrian had
founded Antinopolis to commemorate the tragic drowning of his lover,
Antinous near there. Many believe that grief caused by the news of his
son's death contributed to the death of Constantius a year later.

In
a few hours, Aphalis had destroyed most of the Roman infantry on the
east bank along with their charismatic leader. The Roman cavalry were
able to avoid being trapped. There was also the smaller piece of
Constantine's army on the west bank. However, these would not be able
to stop King Aphalis who was soon advancing north again. On June 5, he
captured Oxyrhyncus after a relatively brief siege. While that siege
was going on he was able to rekindle the revolt in Lower Egypt. That
soon included Alexandria which been previously spared. Galerius rushed
additional legions to Egypt but by the end of September Aphalis had
taken Memphis, won two major battles and was besieging Sais. In both of
those battles, the Holy Spear of God played an important role in his
victory but had also suffered heavy losses in the process. By this time
the Christian revolt has spread into Palestine and Cyrenaica.

On
October 4, the Romans tried to lift the Siege of Sais but were again
soundly defeated. Once again the Holy Spear of God played a key role in
the victory but again paid a heavy price. Aphalis was starting to
believe he could win any open field battle by using them. The defeated
Roman army then retreated to Alexandria. When Sais finally fell on November 30, the Aksumites controlled all of Egypt except for Alexandria.
The Romans expected that Aphalis' next move would be to besiege
Alexandria. Instead the kings splits his army. The smaller portion he
kept in Egypt to keep the Roman pinned down inside Alexandria. Aphalis
personally led the rest in an attack into Palestine, the Holy Land where
Our Lord had lived and died then rose from the grave.

However,
despite his religious fervor, Aphalis failed to plan this campaign very
well. His army had serious logistical problems while crossing Sinai.
As he approached Beersheba on February 12, 306, he engaged a large Roman
army that Galerius was leading in person. Aphalis was convinced that he
could prevail yet again by using the Holy Spear of God, but this time
that elite unit which had been badly depleted by its losses in the
earlier battles failed to deliver victory. Nevertheless it did
temporarily check the Roman advance making it easier for the Aksumites
to escape.

Galerius' impulsive nature impeded his
pursuit. At times he thought he can toy with what he regarded as a doomed
enemy and when they demonstrated they still have a bite he became furious. Though deeply discouraged by what happened, Aphilas managed to
keep his army from disintegrating. Meanwhile Roman reinforcements
arrived by sea at Alexandria. Diocletian believed that if the army at
Alexandria attacked in concert with Galerius, they could obliterate the
Aksumites in a pincer attack. However, Galerius believed he can
accomplish that all by himself. He did not want to share the glory and
so ordered the army at Alexandria to stand fast.

When
his army reached Clysma, Aphalis made his stand. By this time, he hasdreceived reinforcements from the units he had left behind in Egypt.
Previously he had become intoxicated with the Holy Spear of God but was
reluctant to use the other Christian Egyptian units for much more than
garrison duty. When Galerius attacked on March 9, these units were
finally allowed to show that could fight. It was a grueling battle
that started at dawn and went on for hours as the temperature steadily
climbed. This was contrary to Galerius' expectations of an easy
slaughter and before long his mounting frustration made him angry enough
to issue some rash orders.

Aphalis waited until late
in the battle to commit the Holy Spear of God using them to plug a
dangerous gap that had emerged. Galerius finally gave up and withdrew.
The next day he finally gave the order for the army at Alexandria to
attack. When it did so it found only very weak opposition in front of
it. It soon retook Sais which the Aksumites had abandoned. It then
took Arsinoe, which had been abandoned as well, but when it approached
Memphis on April 5 it found that Aphalis had moved much of his army
there. The Romans were quickly defeated and forced to make a hurried
retreat to Arsinoe.

When Galerius learned of this, he
believed that could now easily take Clysma but was proven wrong and
suffered another costly defeat. One reason for this is that after
defeating the Romans near Memphis, Aphalis had hurriedly moved back to
Clysma with the bulk of his army anticipating that Galerius would again
attack. Furthermore, after his defeat at Beersheba, he had decided to
remove the Aksumite army in Himyar, which had been hunkered down in
fortified positions since the beginning of the war with Rome. The
Aksumite navy, which continued to dominate the Red Sea, transported this
army directly to Clysma. Lastly, Aphalis had replenished the Holy Sword
of God with qualified Christian replacements.

During
the summer, Aphalis was content to defend a line that ran from Memphis to
Clysma and enjoy the advantages of interior lines of communication.
The Romans wore themselves out with their attacks. Meanwhile, the
Christian revolt continued to spread. Aphalis built up his Christian
Egyptian units and not just the Holy Spear of God. He made careful
preparations for a fall offensive.

Meanwhile, the
Romans had other worries. After several years of war, Diocletion had
been able to impose a harsh peace on the Sassanid Emperor Narseh in 299.
While the current emperor Hormizd was known to be troubled by some
internal unrest, they still worried that he might see the Aksumite
invasion as an opportunity too good resist. Ironically, another of the
problems was Armenia, which the Romans had considered a reliable ally
against the Sassanids. The problem was that King Tridates III of
Armenia had converted to Christianity and made it his country's official
religion around the same time that King Aphalis doing the same in
Aksum. Diocletian and Galerius were worried that Aphilas' campaign
would inspire Tridates into doing something similar.

So
in July, Diocletian began negotiating with Aphalis, offering to let him
keep Upper Egypt and to end the persecution of Christians in the Roman
Empire. Galerius did not care for the terms, but he went along as he saw
it as a way to get Diocletian to finally step down as Emperor. Aphilas
had his own worries. In June, he learned from his son, Prince Wazeba
that a cabal which included pagan priests and some prominent merchants
had tried to seize power in the capital. The merchants were upset the
war had dried up their lucrative trade with the Romans. So the Peace of
Leontopolis was concluded August 26. Aphilas then moved south to Upper
Egypt. When he was sure that the persecution had indeed ended in the
Roman Empire, he returned to Axum and clamped down hard on his political
enemies. He also tried to make the controversial theology of St.
Lucian of Antioch the standard within his expanded empire.

Maximian,
the Augustus of the West, had been shocked that Diocletian had agreed
to let Aphilas keep Upper Egypt. It so upset him that when Diocletian
discussed his plans for both of them to retire together in early
November, Maximian initially refused to resign. In order to placate him,
Diocletian agreed to make Maximian's son, Maxentius a Caesar after the
joint resignation. Galerius was unhappy with this but did not want the
joint resignation that would elevate him to Augustus put off any
longer. When Constantius had died, he had persuaded Diocletian to
appoint Severus as his replacement.

Author's Note: in reality Lucian of Antioch remained at
Antioch. He was executed in 312 as one of the victims of persecution
Maximinus II. Christianity was introduced into Aksum around 320.